Thread by @alifeofmovement

1) Sub-cultures have a tendency to eternalize (@Meaningness) an aspect of the psyche as "what's important" or "what really exists":

Rationality - The logical mind
Hippies - The emotional/relating mind
Entrepreneurs - The narrative mind
Mindfulness - The internal observing mind

2) These are the internal Schelling points where the group over-indexes and also considers to be the most valid forms of knowledge/experience.

3) I believe these initially arise because in any given social group there will be niches which allow individuals to have the most success from one aspect of the mind or another.

4) In large societies with mass communication and transportation, these individuals will naturally be attracted to others who have the same inclination because it's in some sense how they most often "see the world" and also because it will seem like a gold mine of learning.

5) This does tend to create lots of skill in that specific domain, but also tends to create fractured individuals who lose competency in other aspects of the mind because it is generally not rewarded in their social group.

6) In reality the world is not one of these aspects of mind, but rather all of them. Each of them offers different things but it's not a simple pro/con trade off. They are each completely vital to our own sense of being.

7) So call 'simple people' are often drastically less fractured than high achievers and often see a fair bit of reality with much higher fidelity, although they aren't particularly impressive in any given domain.

8) My current life stance is a path of continuous adjacency (rationalist adjacent, hippie adjacent, etc...) to try and learn the best of what these communities have found while maintaining a sense of psychological interconnectedness.

9) Unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to do this without getting some psychological bruises along the way.

It's a bit like riding a bike except instead of falling left or right, you can fall in a hundred different dimensions.

10) But you can learn to fail gracefully.

So here's to happy bruises and fun adventures.